The Evanescent Wave Coronagraph (EvWaCo) is an achromatic coronagraph mask with adjustable size over the spectral domain [600 nm, 900 nm] that will be installed at the Thai National Observatory. We present in this work the development of a bench to characterise its Extreme Adaptive Optics system (XAO) comprising a DM192 ALPAO deformable mirror (DM) and a 15x15 Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SH-WFS). In this bench, the turbulence is simulated using a rotating phase plate in a pupil plane. In general, such components are designed using a randomly generated phase screen. Such single realisation does not necessarily provide the wanted structure function. We present a solution to design the printed pattern to ensure that the beam sees a strict and controlled Kolmogorov statistics with the correct 2D structure function. This is essential to control the experimental conditions in order to compare the bench results with the numerical simulations and predictions.This bench is further used to deeply characterise the full 27 mm pupil of the ALPAO DM using a 54 × 54 ALPAO SH-WFS. We measure the average shape of its inuence functions as well as the inuence function of each single actuator to study their dispersion. We study the linearity of the actuator amplitude with the command as well as the linearity of the inuence function prole. We also study the actuator osets as well as the membrane shape at 0-command. This knowledge is critical to get a forward model of the DM for the XAO control loop.

The evanescent wave coronagraph uses the principle of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) to suppress the light coming from the star and study its close environment. Its focal plane mask is composed of a lens and a prism placed in contact with each other to produce the coronagraphic effect. In this paper, we present the experimental results obtained using an upgraded focal plane mask of the Evanescent Wave Coronagraph (EvWaCo). These experimental results are also compared to the theoretical performance of the coronagraph obtained through simulations. Experimentally, we reach a raw contrast equal to a few 10−4 at a distance equal to 3 λ/D over the full I band (λ c = 800 nm, Δλ/λ ≈ 20%) and equal to 4 λ/D over the full R band (λ c = 650 nm, Δλ/λ ≈ 23%) in unpolarized light. However, our simulations show a raw contrast close to 10−4 over the full I band and R band at the same distance, thus confirming the theoretical achromatic advantage of the coronagraph. We also verify the stability of the mask through a series of contrast measurements over a period of 8 months. Furthermore, we measure the sensitivity of the coronagraph to the lateral and longitudinal misalignment of the focal plane mask and to the lateral misalignment of the Lyot stop.

The Exoplanet High-Resolution Spectrograph (EXOhSPEC) is a high-resolution spectrograph for the characterisation of exoplanets with the Thai National Telescope. The folded version of this instrument comprises one triplet lens to collimate the beam incident on the grating and to focus the beam reflected by the grating onto the camera. This collimator comprises three lenses L1, L2 and L3 of diameter varying between 50 mm and 60 mm. We specified the barrel to guarantee a maximum decenter of the lenses equal to 25 µm. The maximum error in the orientation of each single lens is specified to be lower than 0.03º. The proposed concept is based on a semi-kinematic mounting which is used to restrain these lenses with 6 and 30 N of preloads on the axial and lateral directions to ensure their stability. These preloads are applied to the lenses using the elastic pushing force of silicone elastomers and spring force from ball-plungers. We present the design of the collimator and the assembly method. Our Finite Element Analyses show that the maximum surface error induced by the preloads is lower than 60 nm Peak-To-Valley on each optical surface of L1, L2, and L3. We describe our manufacturing process using NARIT's CNC machine and its validation using our Coordinate-Measuring Machine. Figure 3. Solidworks view of the achromatic triplet lenses with L1 that comprises the optical surfaces S1, S2. Then L2 that comprises the surfaces S3, S4 and L3 that comprises the optical surfaces S5 and S6.

We present the results obtained with an end-to-end simulator of an Extreme Adaptive Optics (XAO) system control loop. It is used to predict its on-sky performances and to optimise the AO loop algorithms. It was rst used to validate a novel analytical model of the tting error, a limit due to the Deformable Mirror (DM) shape.Standard analytical models assume a sharp correction under the DM cuto frequency, disregarding the transition between the AO corrected and turbulence dominated domains. Our model account for the inuence function shape in this smooth transition. Then, it is well-known that Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors (SH-WFS) have a limited spatial bandwidth, the high frequencies of the wavefront being seen as low frequencies. We show that this aliasing error can be partially compensated (both in terms of Strehl ratio and contrast) by adding priors on the turbulence statistics in the framework of an inverse problem approach. This represents an alternative to the standard additional optical lter used in XAO systems. In parallel to this numerical work, a bench was aligned to experimentally test the AO system and these new algorithms comprising a DM192 ALPAO deformable mirror and a 15×15 SH-WFS. We present the predicted performances of the AO loop based on end-to-end simulations.

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